Sunday, 8 June 2014

Let the summer sewing begin!

This is not Spain, Italy, Greece, France or Portugal. This is Ireland! And we even swam in the Irish sea with water being +11C. But before the swim, my friend took a few pictures to show off my new wrap skirt.

After reading Sarai's Wardrobe Architect series of blog posts, I, like many of you, took some time to reflect on my clothes and I decided to create a capsule wardrobe for this spring/summer period.But instead of choosing silhouettes and colour palette, I focused on my lifestyle and the weather as main factors.

We do not have a dress code at work, so my office and after-office clothes are always the same. But I often go out with friends after work, ride a bike and, in general, move around the city a lot . Besides, I am very lazy in the mornings and I prefer garments which are easy to match or quickly to put on.

As for the weather, Dublin requires layering! Regardless of the time of the year, sometimes we experience four seasons in one day. I remember super shitty summers and great winters and vice versa. So, yeah, you never know! And that's the worst part of living here, unless you turn it into a nice personal sewing challenge.

This pattern from the January BurdaStyle perfectly matched a cut of crêpe-de-Chine from my stash. At the very beginning, I hesitated between using silk and knit fabric but I am glad that I did not take the latter: the waistband folds would be extremely difficult to sew.

A few words about the waistband. It is constructed from two separate waistbands, narrow and wide, attached by hand in the middle. Both pieces of fabric have to be folded in half with their edges sewn beforehand. First, you have to attach the narrow waistband to the skirt, wrapping the folds around it. The wider waistband is then sewn to the seam allowance of the narrow one. After that, I attached the narrow waistband to the wide using a catch stitch.

To be completely honest with you, I did not quite succeed with the waistband as I'd like to, but I learnt a lot!

When the skirt was finished, I could not find any t-shirt in my wardrobe which would look nice tucked in. And so, the Nettie Bodysuit was added to my capsule wardrobe too!

Have you followed Wardrobe Architect? What is your experience with creating your capsule wardrobe? Did it work? Do you find it useful at all?

Firstly, I'm not sure I'd be swimming in 10' water but that's another story. This is a great skirt and can imagine it looks super lovely all dressed up as well. Agree the Nettie will be great with it - or maybe a little cropped top. I'm still trying to get my head around how that waistband is sewn up!

Very nice skirt, the fabric is very Summer like!That's what I've heard from my friend living in Dublin - sometimes four seasons in one day! Challenging weather. *^v^*I've never tried to create a capsule wardrobe but I'm drawn to every colour and pattern, so.... ^^*~~We are buying tickets for Tokyo tomorrow, the plans are to travel on 21st August, we're just waiting for my husband to get his holiday plans accepted at work. *^0^*

I was planning to work out my colour palette, but having put together a to do list of projects (http://laurasaurus.net/2014/06/15/coming-up/), it would appear that I'm not going to do that at all. Unless my palette includes all the colours. Or we can call 'pattern' a colour :)

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Sunday, 8 June 2014

Let the summer sewing begin!

This is not Spain, Italy, Greece, France or Portugal. This is Ireland! And we even swam in the Irish sea with water being +11C. But before the swim, my friend took a few pictures to show off my new wrap skirt.

After reading Sarai's Wardrobe Architect series of blog posts, I, like many of you, took some time to reflect on my clothes and I decided to create a capsule wardrobe for this spring/summer period.But instead of choosing silhouettes and colour palette, I focused on my lifestyle and the weather as main factors.

We do not have a dress code at work, so my office and after-office clothes are always the same. But I often go out with friends after work, ride a bike and, in general, move around the city a lot . Besides, I am very lazy in the mornings and I prefer garments which are easy to match or quickly to put on.

As for the weather, Dublin requires layering! Regardless of the time of the year, sometimes we experience four seasons in one day. I remember super shitty summers and great winters and vice versa. So, yeah, you never know! And that's the worst part of living here, unless you turn it into a nice personal sewing challenge.

This pattern from the January BurdaStyle perfectly matched a cut of crêpe-de-Chine from my stash. At the very beginning, I hesitated between using silk and knit fabric but I am glad that I did not take the latter: the waistband folds would be extremely difficult to sew.

A few words about the waistband. It is constructed from two separate waistbands, narrow and wide, attached by hand in the middle. Both pieces of fabric have to be folded in half with their edges sewn beforehand. First, you have to attach the narrow waistband to the skirt, wrapping the folds around it. The wider waistband is then sewn to the seam allowance of the narrow one. After that, I attached the narrow waistband to the wide using a catch stitch.

To be completely honest with you, I did not quite succeed with the waistband as I'd like to, but I learnt a lot!

When the skirt was finished, I could not find any t-shirt in my wardrobe which would look nice tucked in. And so, the Nettie Bodysuit was added to my capsule wardrobe too!

Have you followed Wardrobe Architect? What is your experience with creating your capsule wardrobe? Did it work? Do you find it useful at all?

Firstly, I'm not sure I'd be swimming in 10' water but that's another story. This is a great skirt and can imagine it looks super lovely all dressed up as well. Agree the Nettie will be great with it - or maybe a little cropped top. I'm still trying to get my head around how that waistband is sewn up!

Very nice skirt, the fabric is very Summer like!That's what I've heard from my friend living in Dublin - sometimes four seasons in one day! Challenging weather. *^v^*I've never tried to create a capsule wardrobe but I'm drawn to every colour and pattern, so.... ^^*~~We are buying tickets for Tokyo tomorrow, the plans are to travel on 21st August, we're just waiting for my husband to get his holiday plans accepted at work. *^0^*

I was planning to work out my colour palette, but having put together a to do list of projects (http://laurasaurus.net/2014/06/15/coming-up/), it would appear that I'm not going to do that at all. Unless my palette includes all the colours. Or we can call 'pattern' a colour :)